Who's used what, heard what about what... on the Indiegamer forums it seems like it basically comes down to BMT Micro and Plimus (Matthew Wegner said about the same in his Indie Bootstrap session at GDC). But is there any reason why anyone chose one over the other? Or decided to go with a different service altogether?

PayPal and Google Checkout aren't really e-commerce services because they don't handle the majority of e-commerce activities (such as, like, fraud protection or automated delivery of a link to the full game or an affiliate system). PayPal is probably a bad idea to use exclusively because there are many countries that PayPal doesn't accept money from yet. And Google Checkout requires that you have a merchant account I believe, which costs about a thousand dollars last I heard.

You also forgot a few, like e-sellerate (I think TeeGee uses that one).

Generally I'm most impressed with BMT-micro, and plan to use them, and already set up an account and did a test-purchase and it seems to work fine.

I actually intended to use Plimus at first, but I had major problems setting up an account (it didn't work correctly), I emailed them about it a week or two ago and they've yet to reply (which doesn't speak well of them), so I went with BMT micro and found signing up and setting it up a breeze.

Well, some indies use them so I'm not sure if they should be totally excluded, but you have to do a lot more work with them. For instance, I believe hpapillon used PayPal for her games (not sure if she still does), and she manually had to send out links to the full version of the game for everyone who paid, so if she was on vacation or away from the computer they often had to wait a day or two till she got around to it, which is pretty annoying to the buyer not to get it instantly when they buy the game. But it can be done, and if someone only plans on like a few sales a week and doesn't mind manually mailing out links to the full version to every person who buys the game PayPal is an option. But personally I don't like the idea of the player having to wait for me to get to my email before they get the game.

I guess for convenience's sake, I'm going to leave them out. I want to make this thread primarily for people who are interested in starting a company and making a living (or at least a partial living) from selling games. For people who just want to sell some games here and there, there are plenty of options.

From my extremally deepn and comprehensive research made about eCommerce providers (including such modern techniques of gathering data, like chatting with other devs ):

BMTmicro: They are simply the best, but also a bit steeper with pricing. Good affiliate network and excellent support. Not for people from Eastern Europe or Asia though - they send checks there with a 4 months delay ! Would use them, if not the last part.

Plimus: Great affiliate network and slightly cheaper than BMT. However, they are a bit messy and I've heard about them having silly problems every now and then (RinkuHero seems to confirm that). Same thing as with BMT for indies from the east (I believe, haven't checked lately).

eSellerate: Very good pricing (10% without any "minimal x.x$ stuff" for smaller scale indies). Good service and customer support (from my experiences - almost 24/7). Small affiliate network. What's important about them, they send the money to Eastern Europe/Asia without any problems - that's why all the people in Poland use the - me and Codeminion included.

I've used SetSystems in the past and they were brilliant. Always quick to resolve any issues and went that extra mile to get me up and running. Hell they even sent me a christmas card. I beleive they're part of the Digital River group now though.

So, from what I'm hearing, it seems to be eSellerate if you're in Eastern Europe or Asia, or BMT Micro or Plimus otherwise, although BMT Micro sounds like it's more reliable overall (if you're willing to pay a little more)... or if you're developing Mac software only, then Kagi?

So, from what I'm hearing, it seems to be eSellerate if you're in Eastern Europe or Asia, or BMT Micro or Plimus otherwise, although BMT Micro sounds like it's more reliable overall (if you're willing to pay a little more)... or if you're developing Mac software only, then Kagi?

So, from what I'm hearing, it seems to be eSellerate if you're in Eastern Europe or Asia, or BMT Micro or Plimus otherwise, although BMT Micro sounds like it's more reliable overall (if you're willing to pay a little more)...

Yup, it pretty much boils down to:BMTmicro = best servicePlimus = best affiliateseSelerate = best for Eastern Europe/Asia

Quote from: RinkuHero

BMT-Micro is less than Plimus at the minimum (9.5% to 10%), but other than that, that sounds about right to me.

That's possible. I'm basing my info on research I've done few months ago, so things could change. Still, remember than there are different services for different scale of sales and different methods, so it might be that overall BMT is more expensive.

And yes - it's worth (actually it's almost a must) to sign up with few providers, if you want to be serious with affiliates.